Country Life & More

The second day of our family vacation and all the kids are quiet as mice.  Sitting in the living room of our wonderful beach house with the beautiful surf pounding outside, with the shorline just a few feet from our backdoor…  But all the kids are speechless, stupified despondent as we wait for the phone to ring, the call that the dogs have been found and are safe.   I have never spent so much time with five kids in the same room and all of them quiet.  This is a sad, sad day.

This is not the way vacations are supposed to be.  Please help us find our dogs…

They escaped from their babysitter’s backyard sometime yesterday.  One of the four was found. A very nice woman, Valeria Furman, an employee of the assisted living facility on Garfield and Fair Oaks Blvd in Carmichael,  was getting off work last night at about 1-”15 p.m. when she spotted Annie waiting by the back door of the facility.  Valerie called the number on the tag which is my cell phone number.  Valerie was so sweet and patient to call, and took at least 90 minutes out of her Saturday night to help get Annie to safety and to go out and look for the other missing three dogs.  Thank you, Valerie.

The dogs disappeared from a house on Parque Vista Way off Walnut Avenue near Cottage Way sometime late yesterday (July 24).

OH, MY GOSH THIS IS A TRUE HOMEWARD BOUND STORY.  NOT A FUNNY ONE EITHER!

Three of my four dogs are lost!   Babette, Schwartz and Piper, are lost.  Babette is an adorable brown chihuahua, Schwartz is a Golden Retriever and Piper is a Border Collie.

Schwartz is full

My five children and I left for our vacation yesterday morning (Saturday July 24th) only to get a call at 10:30 p.m. that one of my dogs, Annie ,was found at a nursing home on Fair Oaks Blvd and Garfield.  A friend had been babysitting them while we were on vacation and took them to their house on Parque Vista near Walnut Avenue and Cottage Way.  But it turns out there was a hole in their fence and all four of them escaped from their yard.  Annie was the only one found so far!

While Annie went to a nursing home, the other three have not been seen or heard from since then.  Various friends and family members have put up signs and posters in the area.  And we placed a Craigslist ad for them a few hours ago.  But still no luck in locating the trio.  They could be together or separated.

Here are their descriptions:

Schwartz:  He is a very friendly 2 year old light colored Golden Retriever.  Extrememly kind and friendly, will melt your heart.  Has a distinct odor to his ears but a heart of gold to match his coat.

Piper:  Black and White Border Collie with one half of her face being white, the other black.  Both eyes are dark brown.  She is very quick, smart and a bit protective.  VERY SMART!  This dog will lead you right to my house if you let her.

Babette:  Babette is a large sized chihuahua mixed with some kind of terrier.  She was wearing a lime green color, had dark tear stains on each eye, curled up tail.  This dog has had a very hard life and lived a long time in the pound before my daughter rescued her last year. She is timid but will try to act fierce.  Might bite you, but it won’t really hurt or do damage.  (She has never bitten me, but sometimes acts like she is afraid of strangers.)

The thing is these dogs mean the world to my family…as all family pets hold such special places in their family’s hearts.  I have five children and we just started our family reunion vacation where the rental did not allow us to bring our pets.  My oldest son came back from a year in China and Babette’s owner, my 21-year-old daughter, returned from six months in Brazil.  We are simply sick about this horrible news but our hands are tied here on vacation worrying about their where-abouts.   Please call (916) 224-1604 if you have any news about any of these dogs.

The following post was written by Babette, the Blog Dog. Please visit her blog often to see what kind of mischief she is getting into.

Dear Diary,

Today stinks. Maybe it’s all me. I can’t be sure.

But shoot, I am really bummed out because they washed my blanket. Now everything smells like the Macy’s cosmetic department (I have been there more often than I care to admit…always bundled in some pink coat, thrown under an arm like a purse.)

Frankly, I don’t like the smells of those cosmetic counter places and I certainly don’t want them on my blanket. As soon as I get a chance, I’m going to roll in a snail. Maybe even a slug. That settles it.

For more information on how a dog puts up with humans, put your paw here.

I wonder if I can wear my bee helmet and facial net to the grocery store?  I mean what if the bees are following me when I go to school to pick up the kids?  At what point will I be able to take off my bee suit and put on something fancy, like say, my bathrobe?

These are the obvious questions that are buzzing through my head as I ponder how my life will change when my three-pound clump of honeybees arrives and I station it in my suburban backyard. (Yes, this is legal.)

I don’t have a thing to wear for a life with bees. I will have to solve this problem soon, but first….

Just so you know, I am taking all necessary precautions to keep the bees safe from my neighbors.  I’m providing them their own water supply to keep them out of the nearby liquor stores. I’m setting up their hive at a high elevation. (Bees fly in a straight line to their hive so it’s best to keep their hive higher than say, nose level.) And I am filling my little bee-brain with facts about how to keep these bees merrily buzzing along.

One very fun fact is that I will be in the honey soon. But patience is the key to long-term success with bees. While their mission is to reproduce and survive winters, they need to establish their own honey stores that will last them through next winter. So, it’s best if I don’t dip into their honey this summer and let it “bee.”  I will have to stick with jam for another year.

In the meantime, the taste of the honey changes depending on where the bees collect their honey.  A hint of lavender, lemon, orange blossom…

With all this fun and excitement awaiting me, I imagine time will just fly by as I beekeep.

Even This Guy Can't Find a Bee!

To bee, or not to bee? That has been my question.

I am fascinated by insects, especially insects that help my flowers such as bees and ladybugs. And I have been feeling very sorry for the bee lately.
I said to the only bee I saw last summer, “Look, honey. Where are your friends?”

She just stood there on the cement, nectarless, and said, “I don’t know. Life stings.”

The fact is, last year was a very quiet summer as buzzing goes. At least in my backyard!  So, what’s a bumbled out girl to do?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: When all else fails, breed.

That has always been my motto. So on Saturday I took the plunge and ordered my first-ever bee colony from downtown Sacramento’s beekeeping supply store. The colony will arrive around the first weekend in April and I will go down there in a spacesuit, pick it up, bring it to my pre-assembled hive, and let the nature lessons begin.

Between now and splashdown, I am going to read all about how to do this right. Any comments? Any suggestions? Any horror stories? Please pass them along here.

Schwartz is full

Funny how my sweet Schwartzie is not hungry for his dog food tonight.  I guess that lamp cord he gobbled up Saturday night really filled him up.  And here I thought it was a light meal.

Enlighten me please.

Why is it my precious dog, Schwartz, loves to eat cords?  I thought we had grown out of this problem after he ate three phone chargers, two cell phones and numerous little plugs during his puppyhood.

But no.

And I thought he was bright! At least bright enough not to need to eat any lights!

What happened? Well, yesterday my daughter moved her dorm lamp home and into my bedroom.  ”Sure is cute. I’ll take it!” I said.

Durning the night I heard some strange noises coming from under my bed. Noises like this: “Crunch. Crack. Chomp. Yum. Burp.” This went on so long that I had to turn on the light. However, it wouldn’t turn on.  Instead, a warm glow emitted from the belly region of my precious Schwartz. Hmmm? Is he an angel? Is he God himself?

After rolling out of my bed much the way a hot dog rolls off a Walmart weenie cooker, I began to crawl around under the bed to look for the lamp’s light switch. (There are no overhead lights in my home’s bedrooms…)

“Think, think, think!” I said to myself.  I must have been saying this too much because all my talk about thinking was leaving me no time to actually think because I think best  in quiet , not to mention well-lit, rooms.

After crawling around until dawn and until sunlight  began to trickle through the fog, I finally spotted my daughter’s lamp. Sure enough, it was missing its cord. Litle pieces of electrical items were scattered like cookie crumbs here and there.

Darn. Why am I so in the dark as to why a dog likes to eat lamp cords?

The only thing I can figure is that he is jealous of lamps. Doesn’t want any competition. Indeed,  Schwartz is the light of my life, but this is going too far.  I guess he just hates it when a new light enters the household and threatens to take his top dog spot on the brilliance meter.

Doesn’t he know he will always be the light of my life?  I guess I just have to cuddle him more. You know, love that cord-eating phenomenon right out of him.

Schwartz lounging with his kitten after eating a lamp cord

If only those blasted chairs at the ski resort didn’t move so darn fast and didn’t go up so darn high… if only they made skis that were bendable… if only ski boots were made for walkin’… if only mountains weren’t so steep… if only ice didn’t stick to the underbelly of a Golden Retriever… if only the average mom could carry 14 skis, 36 poles and 17 peanut butter sandwiches all at the same time, if only snow fell in a tropical setting… If only all that stuff was possible, then our family may end up being good skiers.

It’s not that we’re bad at skiing. It’s just that we are bad at everything that leads up to the actual act of skiing.

My first mistake was to go skiing. Other than that, I made some good decisions while we were skiing over winter break.  Probably the best decision I made was not to jump off the chairlift to rescue my 9-year-old right after he fell off the chair.  It was a tough call:  I felt him sliding right off, looked down and saw the puffy white powder below and watched helplessly as my little dear heart tumbled down through the winter sky into a poofy pool of whiteness  Oooops.

A mother’s worst nightmare. But I could tell he landed in a soft area…I could feel the chair lift rising faster and faster, higher and higher. My instinct was to jump off after him, but in a flash I made the decision to stay seated since his landing was safe and mine would not have been. The chair lift was going so fast and climbing so high so suddenly that the time differential between his landing and what would have been my landing, would have resulted in a bad scene for me. Plus, the chair lift operator saw my son’s fall and was running to his rescue.  Talk about scary.  This is only part of the story… Stay tuned to my Country Life column in Inside Arden for the full story. … And yes, you might even find out the best way to remove icy snowballs stuck to your dog’s fur.

When it comes to fun, there’s nothing like being tangled up in skies, upside down, toppled over, face-first, fanny skyward, twisted up together with all your kids in a gigantic jumble of frozen tundra. This is really livin’.

“I’ll show you how this is done,” you can mutter into the avalanche. “Nothing to it, but to slip your ski up and over and then under and out, then sideways and longways, zappo, zingo. You”re back on your nose.” Easy as pie. (Suddenly, that makes a lot of sense as I NEVER, EVER have been able to make a decent pie.)

Today, we are off into the white unknown. After staying up late last night to prepare, trying on warm clothes, practicing our racing slaloms on the edge of the bathtub (that’s the only way we can see really good in a mirror) we are ready to hit the slopes.

A fabulous way to ring out the old year, if I do say so myself.  I just wish we weren’t taking the dogs…

I will report back today, so long as we get out of the E.R. before nightfall.

Leave it to me to figure out how to sprain my kidney and shatter my nebula all in the name of thrifty household repair.

It all started when I put a load of sheets in the dryer… Two minutes into their cycle, I heard a buzz. “They can’t be ready yet,” I said to the disposal.

“Buzz,” said the dryer again.  “Well, I guess they are ready,” I whistled to the sponge.

But, nope. I was wrong. The dryer just kept on buzzing…and the sheets were still wet as could be. I did a lot of “harumphing,” banging, clanging, climbing around. I unfastened the dryer vent that goes outside, peeked in there for good measure.  (Nothing visible because it’s very dark in that long, winding thing.)  Turns out it was a mistake to look inside that long thing. Never ever do that.

To peek inside there, I had to climb on the dryer and somehow my left slipper was stuck on the dryer door and my right slipper was stuck on the window sill… This is a bad thing, especially when the dryer door flings open. Thank God I had a hip bone to cushion my fall. Only now my whole left side is numb, black, blue and purple. There goes my centerfold modeling contract with National Geographic.

I decided that 5 days before Christmas is a terrible time to buy a new dryer so I kept at my fix-it plan despite having the wind knocked out of my epidermis.  I realized that the dryer knob felt funny so I took it off and got a wrench-like device and turned the little knob under the knob. Voila!  This fixed my dryer.

At least I will have dry sheets to line my coffin.

I suggest calling a dryer repair man if you hear a buzzing coming from your dryer.